British fund management companies failing

“UK fund managers are failing to meet investor demands for customer service” read the headline at FinExtra.com, therefore neatly summarizing a bit of a damning report from Talisma Corporation. According to the CRM software vendor, Brit firms flunk in delivering proper customer service “across a range of channels such as e-mail, web self-service, online chat and telephone.”

Specifically speaking, the numbers say that at the top 100 fund management companies in the United Kingdom, a full-on 49 percent of all email enquiries went unanswered for at least 48 hours. Over 60 percent of fund managers were found to have “no knowledge base or detailed questions and answers to help prospective investors make an informed investment decision.” Seventy-seven percent of fund managers were found inadequate in terms of possessing a unified view of customer history, and 100 percent had no online chat.

Talisma did have one positive conclusion, though, stating the 95 percent of phone calls to the fund managers were answered within thirty seconds. Overall, service level for the U.K.’s fund managers limped in at a 53 percent average.

To sound a death knell (or at least fire a flare-gun wake-up call), Jon McNerney, Talisma international operations vice president concluded that “those companies that cannot integrate their data to provide a complete service will struggle to compete.”